To whom it meow concern,

Greetings from Earth!  This is Dakota and I am writing to my fellows on planet Poopcat to report the status of my intelligence gathering mission. 

I have successfully infiltrated the heart and mind of a ridiculously good-looking Earthing.  His friends call him Adam Wick.  I have fooled him into believing I am a docile, loving, obese companion.  This has allowed me to collect a multitude of information about Earth and its people.  When he leaves for class, I open his computing machine and look through all of his files.

He is currently studying American Literature at a local community college and I have been monitoring his every move.  His class has been studying the writings of early North American settlers.  The early North Americans had claimed to worship a loving and peaceful God, but their brutal actions and treatment of their fellows of other skin color say otherwise.  This reminds me nothing of Poopcat.  From my earliest memory, all of us have respected and loved each other; from Abyssian to Minx to Siamese.  The closest event I could relate the North American’s behavior to is the attempted invasion of Poopcat by the Barkers several years ago.  Fortunately, all of their butt-sniffing and slobbering led to a failed invasion.

One of the first writers that my servant learned of was William Bradford.  He was referred to as a Pilgrim; which means that he was a native of England, but later fled to America to separate from a oppressive English church.  As scholar Dorothy Kelso explained, “There they could be loyal subjects of King James, live by English law and with English customs, but be far enough from interference in their way of worship”(Kelso).  Bradford and his people had heard about the native people of the newly founded America.  Although he had not yet had any contact with them, in his History of Plymouth Plantation he writes, “And also those which should escape or overcome these difficulties, should yett be in continuall danger of ye salvage people, who are cruell, barbarous, & most trecherous, being most furious in their rage, and merciles wher they overcome” (Bradford 25).  Essentially, Bradford (who had recently escaped religious persecution and oppression in England) was spreading hatred and negative sentiments regarding a group of people he had not met.    This writer tells me much about how the human brain works.  They are very quick to make judgments without proper information or research.  I have definitely used this defect to my advantage with Wick; he has judged me as his partner when it is clear to me that I am in control.

Later in the class they discussed the writing of Captain John Smith.  I had recognized the name but could not figure out where from.  It later dawned on me that Smith was a character in the movie Pocahontas that I remember watching as a kitten.  The version Wick read about is much different and slightly more entertaining.  Smith wrote in what Earthings call a third-person “point of view”; a style of writing that allows the narrator to write of his actual (or in this case embellished) experiences (Creel).  One of Wick’s classmates, Mr. Wink, described Smith’s writings very well when he wrote, ““Logic says that one person cannot be the hero or sole rational person at every event he is witnesses, yet that is the perspective of all of Smith’s tales”(Smith and Powathon Discussion).  Smith believed that he was a sort of Godly figure, and wanted all of his readers to know it.  In The generall historie of Virginia, New England & the Summer Isles, together with The true travels, adventures and observations, and A sea grammar - Volume 1 he wrote a tale of his capture by the native people.  Smith was convinced they wanted to eat him like a can of Fancy Feast when he wrote, ““all this time not one of them would eate a bit with him, till the next morning they brought him as much more, and then did they eate all the old, & reserved the new as they had done the other, which made him thinke they would fat him to eat him”(Smith 98).  This shows Smith’s racist views towards the Native people by his spreading of untrue tales and misconceptions.  Smith had two goals: unwarranted self-promotion and degradation of the Native Americans.

 It has become clear to me from my time here that humans don’t typically consume one another.  They are more inclined to eat other lowly animals such as cows, pigs, and chickens.  Wick sometimes views me as a lowly creature, and I can only hope he chooses not to eat me.  This would cause a major disruption in my intelligence gathering.  Standby for further reports.

Wick has also been studying a writing of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson.  Although she is not quite as entertaining as Smith was, they shared a common infatuation for the ridiculous.  Rowlandson wrote a captivity narrative, which describes one’s occupation by another with some specific characteristics and rhetorical purposes, like the reinforcement of stereotypes (Campbell).  Her word choice made Rowlandson’s views on Native Americans very clear when she writes, “Now away we must go with those barbarous creatures, with our bodies wounded and bleeding, and our hearts no less than our bodies”(Rowlandson).  By using the term “barbarous creatures”, her readers are led to an image of the cruel nature of the Indians.  Another one of Wick’s classmates, Rachel Reichstadt, made an excellent point regarding the credibility of Rowlandson.  She wrote, “She was held captive by black, devil creatures and yet nearly all of her anecdotes living with them involve kindness, giving, or behavior like she’d expect from her Christian friends (though loathe she is to give them credit for such human behaviors)”(Rowlandson and Captivity).   Rachel points out the hypocrisy in Rowlandson’s story; a “do as I say, not as I do” mentality.

Although many of these prejudices have been erased, I have noticed that in life on present day Earth, some people are still discriminated against.  They are housed in low-income neighborhoods and fill the prison systems.  People still use derogatory words when referring to those of other ethnicities.  These actions are some of the reasons I miss Poopcat so much.

I will remain on Earth until my investigation yields more results.  I am particularly interested in this Wick character and his studies.  I have enclosed a photo of both of us so you can see the extreme handsomeness I wrote of earlier.